I'll be the guy to say it. It could be better. I love the trees, but I think a little more density and then a transit corridor instead of some of the roads. If you squished it in a little more you can still have a lot of green space, and the density to support like a light rail or streetcar corridor. Donoteat did a comparison on this kind of development (I think in his public housing vid) and realized it's not much more dense than a Philly row house neighborhood.
Don't get me wrong, though, this is 1,000% better than suburban sprawl, though.
If population is the aim then with current technology we could just make the buildings higher without sacrificing green space.
Tall buildings have other problems. They can quickly require more and more complex systems, and get more difficult to construct. Each additional floor adds complexity to things like plumbing, and HVAC, added elevator capacity, stronger steel, etc. I think the height of these are actually pretty good for the purpose of public housing. Green space is good too, you just probably don't need quite this much.
How can anyone hate this? Like just add some graffiti and local art to it and boom. Heaven on earth.
Well, 0 effort graffiti that's just some idiot who tagged some nonsense no one cares about on the wall kinda sucks, but sometimes even low effort graffiti can be witty.
overall it makes the city look uglier for me
I think that ought to be only told when there is no advertisement in the public space which really does make the city ugly AF. Then the next step would be reducing and removing those cars and the space they occupy and then we can talk about graffiti. But before that lets quickly talk about who lets houses rot, who denies people modes and means of expression and who holds them in sub par labour contracts?
Most of it doesn't look great, no, but some is really cool. The polytechnic campus has some really awesome murals, although they painted over a really awesome one recently and I'm still pissed about it.
Here's a few cool ones: https://truevoyagers.com/blog/athens-street-art
This was the one they painted over: https://nb.bbend.net/media/news/2021/04/08/1184452/main/polytexneioupoli.jpg
A lot of graffiti is just political mottos etc.
There is some regions which do look a bit ugly because for some reason anarchists really really like graffiti but most of them really suck at it, so places like Exarcheia don't look great as a result (although a lot of the really cool murals are there).
You obviously don't live in a place where random assholea just write their names or gang signs really huge on everything. I don't really give that much of a fuck but that shit definitely is not pleasing to the eye.
Much easier for comrades with anxiety issues. All that graffiti shit is noisy and anxiety inducing. Solid pastels have the exact opposite effect.
I'm just going to throw this out there and say that despite what chuds say, building ugly concrete buildings is not mandatory under socialism
they've got it half-right. chuds get the ugly concrete buildings, cool people get the nice concrete buildings
Goddamn communists, where's the lawn?! How am I supposed to take care of my lawn with pesticides if there isn't one? Owned.
You get a home provided by the government and you get to have great air quality along with lots of birds and squirrels.
I park it on the aircraft carrier I have parked on my front lawn ;)
The colonisation of nature in the suburbs is such a disgusting thing to me. One kind of grass that may as well be cement that you have to drain and poison groundwater for. A handful of ornamental trees that animals can only reach if they run across roads. Maybe some of the houses have birdfeeders or flower gardens but a bird might have to fly a mile or more out of its way to find a food source that isn't toxic. A squirrel if it can even find a home is at the mercy of a gigantic dog kennel, scrounging for the barest of nesting materials that might include fibreglass or plastic or contaminated cloth. Its food stores are whatever scarce nuts it can find and what people intentionally feed it because the bird feeders are squirrel-proofed. Social units are interrupted daily as mothers are run over and poisoned and mauled, otherwise feeding on trash.
We've completely alienated these species from every physiological and higher need. We're doing a project of mass desertification over every habitat that can be flattened, then when these animals do manage to survive despite our efforts we classify them as pests and exterminate them. For trying to house their babies from the cold because we stole their ability to do so. Not for our own survival need, but for the fucking property value in an economic system completely divorced from ecological value. Low-density residential/commercial areas in cities/suburbs are a cancer on nature.
I dont really like using the term Desertification for urban sprawl and surburban blights, because its more similar to badlands. Harsh exposed cement and asphalt absorbing and radiating heat surrounded by houses that collectively blot out the wind. Water and rain dont seep into anything and instead rush away from the artifical rocks to the sewer and storm drain systems. The days are never cool and moist as the only thing moisturizing the air is lawns. When things die their corpses are shuttled away from the environment and thrown into the city dump, where their body's nutrients will never feed a tree or fungus or other animal. It is a bad land, where as deserts can be beautiful.
Badlands are probably more descriptively correct, but what's the term for the process of land degrading into it? I love deserts as a natural landscape but in this context am drawing from the idea of food deserts. There are big swaths of urban areas where similarly alienated humans have to travel similar distances for accessible nutritious food. Suburban desertification would extend that same process to the larger variety of animals trying to coexist in the space.
I think we're going to have to make a term for it, especially as the suburbs become depopulated in the face of post-industrialization. I'm not feeling extremely poetic or artful rn so I dont think I could make a term like that, but maybe something like suburosion or anthrosion.
That's what I'm moving toward too. A confederation of homesteads localising the food supply in an ecologically sustainable way, collective mutual aid projects like the Black Panther breakfasts. I just need to find the right area that's cheap enough to afford a few acres, not heavily reactionary, and water-safe enough to survive the next decade.
Northern Michigan and the great lakes in general are my primary candidate, but Michigan's right-wing militias are extreme enough to try to kidnap the governor (with the FBI's help, but I doubt it took much convincing) and the way they handle environmental disasters is uniquely atrocious. Wisconsin is similarly reactionary but it's next to Chicago's socialist base while Minnesota at least has the left-wing movements in Minneapolis that will disperse into the surrounding area along with lots of freshwater sources and a border with Canada. I'd love to do the PNW, especially Washington, but that's Northwest Imperative country and the Nazis are already firmly established in that exact kind of setup.
The pending southwestern, coastal southern, and coastal northeastern migration waves are all big spooks. Getting ahead of that curve, even in the smallest way with residency and some kind of minor land ownership before the value bubbles, seems like the best decision I can make.
With the kidnapping, even if they were handed the plan they were radicalised enough to commit to it. The thing that really concerns me is how readily the militias downplayed the reality of the event while simultaneously endorsing everything about it and fetishising it. It was very similar to Kyle Rittenhouse. Regardless of the circumstances, although they're much more indicting in his case, it was turned into an act of martyrdom for a group of people who worship hero narratives. Everyone accepted the standard he set as readily as incels accepted Elliott Rodgers or Nazis did Dylan Roof. If their local extremists are willing to commit to something so comically extreme, when local conditions deteriorate they're already prepared to endorse. If given the opportunity as they were in Oregon with the wildfires, it takes groups like that all of half an hour to coalesce into a death squad.
I would look to Canada and Alaska, or even some areas of Montana. Pretty much everywhere is going to get hotter and change, just try not to displace indigenous peoples.
Alaska would be lovely if not for the cost of importing materials. As a fungiculturist I can't do much with softwood so I'd be importing hardwood internationally from BC or from the mainland. Same goes for any complex manufacturing. Montana's outdoor growing season is shittier than Colorado's which already infuriates me. The Rockies give you very little summer to work with and it's full of giant hail. The lower population density would be great compared to areas next to major metropolitan areas in the midwest, but homesteading would be frustrating.
Youre goiing to have to learn from Native American strategies in areas like montana. Theres a reason why cattle rearing is still done there, you have to survive off things like grass which you can only readily do if you use ruminants as an intermediate. They can provide oils through butter and suet, wool if you use goats or alpacas, or leather otherwise. Learn from the people that came before us, we are their inheritors whether we like it or not.
it's so pretty from eagle-view, imagine getting out of work and just walking around that greenery!
To be honest this is in part because native californian vegetation looks depressing as hell. Maybe I'm biased.
Yeah. I think part of it is attempting to bolster vegetation in dry areas. Mismanage water and throw in drought-resistant plants/grass and here you go.
How did you make it so that the two posts appear right next to the other?
There used to be a huge all-year open air community swimming pool next to Kremlin. Now in it's place is Russia's main church. "What they took from us" indeed...
Here's Che chatting with people in that pool during his Moscow visit.
My dog gets surprisingly freaked out by people playing tennis, so I’m afraid I myself would not be able to take up residence inside the tennis panopticon.
Edit: oh, that’s not a tennis court, but fuck it, I like my joke so it stays.
The nearest pair of trees I can pitch a hammock from is two blocks away. This looks like paradise.
